


Lupercalia

by wraithnoir



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: M/M, marcus has it bad, warning: history ahead, why don't these boys get more love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 16:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13685730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithnoir/pseuds/wraithnoir
Summary: Festivals in Rome are memories for Marcus now, but he likes to share them with Esca. He wants to impress him or surprise him, keep him close at any rate.





	Lupercalia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dentigerous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dentigerous/gifts).



“After that,” Marcus concluded, walking his fingers around the rock he’d been using to illustrate his explanation, “The _Luperci_ head back to the cave, after the feasting and revelry is complete.” He looked up to see Esca’s paler eyebrows high on his forehead, the familiar incredulous and bemused expression Marcus had come to know pretty well in the time he’d known him. “What? You don’t think that sounds like a good festival?”

“They...ran around slapping things with the hide of their sacrifice, naked, then went back to a cave?” Esca asked, his accented Latin seeming particularly accented, as it always did when he was questioning something about Roman culture. Far from being offended, Marcus grinned broadly at him. He liked when Esca asked questions; it was good to talk about the parts of their cultures that could be universal; it wasn’t as if the Britons didn’t do their fair share of nude dancing for their own festivals.

“You make it sound as though they crawl in and huddle there, gibbering, until the next year when they’re allowed out,” he laughed, sitting back and stretching his leg out. It was stiff after sitting on the ground, but he’d had to lay out rocks and twigs and buds to properly show Esca how the grand city of Rome was laid out, the hills of its glorious origin, the Palatine chief among them. Even the largest cities here in Britannia were nothing to the civilized cities of the empire, with their well-paved roads and less-rustic baths. His uncle’s house was certainly far-advanced of those places on the frontiers that Marcus had seen when he had come to soldier, but as he had recovered and had explored the town, he had found how it was lacking in the more discretely Roman ways. “It’s not like that at all; our priests are not like your priests. This feast is one of laughter and fertility.”

“Ah yes, I’d forgotten the women actively seek to be struck so they’ll be blessed with healthy births.” Esca smirked and looked away, squinting into the setting sun and letting the breeze blow his pale hair off his forehead. The deep rich light touched off strands of gold in the Briton’s hair and eyebrows and eyelashes; there was something of the chieftain’s son about him always, Marcus thought; it was easier to imagine the torc around his neck than to know the slave mark cut into his ear. “Our ways of blessing for that come later in the spring. With fires.” 

“Well that’s because spring takes four more months to get here and you still need fires to keep warm once the sun sinks below the trees,” Marcus teased, voice low and easy and smiling. Esca responded to that smile, though when he turned back to Marcus he kept his eyes down as though the Roman wouldn’t be able to see his smile where it curved like a bow. “In Rome, the sun remembers us sooner.”

Esca’s snort was silent but it made Marcus smile that much more. He had hardly managed to control his expression when Esca looked up with so much insouciance that it never even registered to Marcus that he was supposed to think of Esca as his slave. He couldn’t imagine rebuking him, much less disciplining him. The things Esca did for him seemed natural now, since he’d needed someone while his leg made his day-to-day life a trial; the way he had helped him through his healing, the way he slept across the doorway as though there was something out in the night to protect him from, the way he’d brought him Cub...they seemed the actions of a friend. He knew that Esca must still feel the gulf between them, but it lessened day by day. Esca had not been born to be a slave. Perhaps Marcus had not been born to be a master either. Neither seemed entirely certain how to exist in a world that insisted those were roles they should play. 

“So would you do that here?” Esca asked suddenly, flicking a stray twig across the area Marcus had set aside as the Forum. “Shall I go into town and see if I can procure a goat?”

“What? No. The season’s passed already. Besides, it’s a Roman festival mainly. The location is key to it; there is much bound up in the origin of the city, Romulus and Remus and their miraculous childhood with the she-wolf.” Marcus stretched his arms over his head and watched the sun slipping away from the day. Another day’s slow progress; he’d walked much further today that even a week ago, and the pain in his leg was less than it had been then. The cool of the evening tended to bring it out, though, and remind him that though the surgeon had done much, it was still a wound that had forever changed his life. 

“Ah.” Esca was silent a moment, then pushed himself to his feet and walked over to fetch the cloak he’d brought out and set over one of the benches. Marcus wasn’t even sure when he’d done that; he didn’t remember Esca bringing it out with him when they’d walked out to the garden. Cub lifted his head to watch Esca lazily, but when it was clear that what he was doing had nothing to do with food, the wolf pup put his head down again over his crossed front legs, which were growing longer by the day.

Marcus watched him as well. “Ah?” he repeated questioningly, wondering if Esca would continue. However, the other man remained silent as he walked back and set the cloak over Marcus’ shoulders. He smiled gratefully; Esca never forgot anything.

“I only just realized something. _Lupercalia_ , you said it was. Wolf. Like the story about Rome.” It was a story Esca had actually enjoyed, though it was about the founding of the city that would one day destroy his own way of life. Marcus thought he just liked the wolves of it, the idea of men bring brought up to power by the wild. 

“Yes, exactly. It’s all sort of...bound together. I don’t know. I think it used to be slightly more solemn, but there is a lot of humor in it now. Even highborn young men will run about with the _februa_. This way.” Marcus leaned over his mockup of Rome and ran his fingers around the Palatine, in a circle tending left. The cloak slid off his shoulder as he laughed. 

“Did you?” Esca asked, leaning over to pull the cloak back up as though Marcus would take a chill in the few seconds it had slipped. “Run naked and wild with the other youths?”

Marcus laughed full out at that, as though his time in Rome had been that of a magistrate’s son rather than as a boy whose entire heart and soul was already set on soldiering. As though he was the type of youth who would have been the type to laugh wildly and let himself run with the air and the eyes of all on his body, running for the sake of it. He had never thought of it then, and when he closed his eyes he imagined instead the festivals Esca had spoken of, those strange Briton rites of fire and dancing, and it was Esca he imagined, running in a dark wood with firelight dancing over his pale skin while he ran and laughed as though howling, with Cub running beside him. Perhaps that was what made him blush, that he could see it so clearly. Or maybe it was the strange realization that he himself could never run like that again, would never run to the top of a hill to standing panting and grinning to himself at the summit as he looked down over a valley. 

“Did you?” Esca repeated, his still grave voice insistent as he watched Marcus’ face, pale eyes too intense to be a slave’s eyes. Marcus met them, the blush not fading from his cheeks. 

“I didn’t,” he said, then laughed to cover his strange reaction. “And I can’t even think about it here; now that the sun’s gone, it’s freezing.” 

Esca gestured to the rustic model of Rome. “How will Rome survive it?” he asked, then stood up to help Marcus rise. Cub trotted to join them, stepping right through the Forum as he moved to keep himself by Marcus’ side.

“The way I’ll keep warm tonight myself. Through the grace of a wolf.” He laughed lightly and was rewarded by a smile from Esca, but it was impossible not to notice how warm the Briton was as he walked close to him back into the villa and he wondered how much warmer it would be (oh treacherous mind!) to have his grace instead.


End file.
